One is emotionally dishonest to get media coverage, the other has sex to get media coverage. I’d say that Roz is definitely more a literal media whore than Robin, given that Robin isn’t a literal media whore at all.

I could take it or leave it. Got a family, I do right by them, hardly see it as a building block for a nation though. If a politician starts telling me they’re pro family values I start wondering whether they’re genuinely unaware of what a politician does or if they just don’t have a platform at all.

Tell me what your plan is to create more jobs. Tell me how you’re gonna improve the economy. Tell me how you plan to enforce the rights of the downtrodden, and how much money you plan on putting into our infrastructure. Tell me whether or not our educational system is a major priority for you and how that will show itself in your actions during your administration.

If a politician’s talking about family values then they have nothing to say. Family values are micro. I’m trusting politicians to work on a macro level. At the very smallest they should be worried about communal values and ideally national values would not in fact be beyond them. By the time we’re up to president global values are a necessity and even then none of these words tell me what these values are or how they translate into policies.

It’s an entirely hollow statement that’s flawed from the very premise. It’s an empty can of soup sitting in a brewery auction. Not only will it not generate the necessary product, but were I to buy it there’s still not even any of the soup pictured on the label contained within it. It’s not true at all. It’s the farthest thing from true. Tell me what a vote for you would actually do.

A big part (perhaps the only truly significant part) of being a politician is being a celebrity. All the stuff you just listed off right there is stuff that politicians only wish they could have a predictable effect on. As long as a politician promises to do his best to avoid pointless wars, then basic morality is really the only thing left on the table that’s actually something a politician can’t afford to compromise on.

I’d vote for a president who promised to do absolutely nothing to change the status quo while in office, and let the economy float freely recession if it works out that way, as long as he was capable of being a good, moral example for people. It’s when politicians start claiming the laughable ability to do something about the economy and whatnot that I stop believing them.

Yet, the reason the world is in an economic mess is because the gvoernment hasn’t be doing anything with the economy. I’m not supporting anything, I’m just pointing out that the greatest the economy has ever been was when politicians at least participated to a certain level in it.

I see very little evidence of that. The recent US recession is largely a result of government interference in the housing market during the 90s, and consequences that rose naturally out of that interference. Not that I’m saying that it was in any way intentional, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

Clinton’s administration put a big focus on getting a house for everyone who wanted one. Seems like a great idea, right? Homeowners are statistically more stable members of society, and contribute more to GDP. And it worked for more than a decade! But then people start adapting to the economic climate the policy created and all of a sudden the bubble bursts.

Political interference in society is never predictable, and rarely positive in the long-term.

The problem was, they confused cause and effect. Practicing certain habits (often referred to as “middle class values”) greatly increases one’s chances of owning a home. Home “ownership” achieved through gimmicky loans does nothing to inspire good habits. (Ownership in quotes, because someone with zero or negative equity doesn’t “own” anything in any meaningful sense.) By this logic, you could make someone a better athlete just by giving them a trophy.

Plus, the government was pursuing two directly opposed goals. They wanted to incease home ownership, but they didn’t want to do this by the obvious method of allowing housing prices to fall. High and rising home prices made homeowners feel rich and happy, which is always good for votes. Thus, the only way to make housing more “affordable” was to make it easier for potential buyers to take on debt. This meant artificially low interest rates and subsidies and incentives for banks to make loans that otherwise made no sense. It all looked good for a while, but the bubble eventually burst just like they always do.

Oh, and don’t forget other ways governments distorted the housing market. If you look closely, you’ll notice that many of the hardest-hit areas had highly restrictive zoning and land-use regulations, which made housing artificially scarce and therefore more expensive. Areas without such policies tended to experience much less dramatic price inflation during the boom, and much less trauma when the bubble burst. (What can I say, living in the sticks has its upside.)

The Law of Unintended Consequences is one law Congress can’t repeal, and it always enforces itself sooner or later.

“All the stuff you just listed off right there is stuff that politicians only wish they could have a predictable effect on”

All the stuff I list is what they’re supposed to be working on. It’s not easy. We’re talking about running a friggin society here. It’s a big job, and a lot of people are involved in it.

Whether or not they can have a predictable effect is irrelevant. They need to be working with goals in mind. Is the goal to improve the economy and get more jobs, or is the goal to eliminate threats to our national wellbeing? Whatever the goals are they aren’t “Reinforcing family values”. That doesn’t say anything. Unless they’re campaigning to combat spousal abuse or something, in which case there are better ways to say that.

Treating the job like a mere celebrity title is entirely the problem. There are better mediums for a popularity contest.

If your platform is based around maintaining the status quo that’s fine. That’s still a platform. Not saying every politician needs to change the world or even change anything, just saying they have to be more than a pretty face that spouts off slogans that sound reassuring but don’t actually say anything.

You wanna make a living off your charming personality? Be a japanese idol or a talk show host.

Politics is NOT supposed to be about running a society. The very idea is laughable. What do politicians know of society? Politics is about LEADERSHIP. And as far as I can tell, leadership only matters in society in a very small number of areas, such as foreign policy, and politicians can stay the heck out of the rest of society’s issues.

And having goals is fine, but claiming the ability to achieve goals based on a ridiculous lack of evidence is not. I’m tempted to say that you only believe that politicians can impact the economy in a predictable way because they say they can, but I suppose you’d probably be offended by that. Still, I dare you to cite any incontrovertible evidence whatsoever in support of your view.

Well, right there’s your problem: no one runs “society”, least of all politicians. (And thank all the gods that never were for that.) Human society is far too complex to be managed by any person or even group of people. Those who attempt to do so never have all the critical information, so their plans are inevitably flawed and incomplete. The more they try to force society to conform to their imaginary ideals, the more damage they do. “Creating jobs” is just one example of this. Politicians do not create jobs, or if they do, they do so only by destroying others, which might have been more productive. The only way politicians can actually help the economy is by stressing the rule of law and strengthening rights of property and contract, and then staying out of the way.

To me, Family Values is a crappy sequel that got Tag Team to modify their one hit wonder song about the booty (which I wholeheartedly endorse, the song and the booty, that is), before Hollywood really ran out of ideas, and is attempting to ruin my childhood, especially with movies like The Smurfs and Battleship.

Hell a few years ago, no one expected the end of MySpace, and look what happened to it. I doubt youtube is going anywhere in the next few years, but hey, never know.

P.S. Yes, I know MySpace isn’t completely gone, but considering it’s down to a quarter of the size in work force, and way less then that in it’s net worth compared to just 3 years ago, it’s close enough.

I was making a joke about the fact that Republicans try to universal-ize their own traditions and values. Its the same exclusionary tactics that resulted in the phrase “All American” meaing “WASP” until the 70s.

Please don’t assume that what you see in movies and TV shows bears any resemblance to how the vast majority of Americans actually live and behave. Otherwise you’ll get some really strange ideas.

Interesting note on hypocrisy, though: while both liberals and conservatives are often caught in hypocritical behavior, the consequences vary widely. When conservatives violate their stated values, it’s usually harmful, although the harm is often limited to the hypocrite in question and possibly his/her family. When liberals violate their stated values, it often benefits them and their families. You hafta ask, which is a better standard, one you suffer for violating, or one you actually benefit by violating?

Some families will have the first when they’re young couples, and the second after the first leaves the nest. That’s a full blown twenty year gap you can have between siblings. I don’t think Robin’s anything quite that extreme, but then again thirty is generally considered an excessively young age to be a successful politician. Wouldn’t be outlandish for Robin to be closer to forty.

Heck, my sister’s eight years younger than me and the internet she’s growing up with is not the internet I grew up with. Youtube was created in 2005. That’s six years ago. I was eighteen at the time. She was ten.

If Robin’s been busy with politics to a degree that she’s not staying savvy to this stuff then it’s more than possible that a lot of this stuff is foreign to her at this point even with a relatively minor age gap.

Hell, when I was growing up videophones were a fantasy device on the pokemon animated series. Now look look how these cell phones have developed. My sister has one growing up, I got one when I could afford to pay for one and felt like replacing my home phone line. It doesn’t take that many years to make a difference.

Chill out. Faux rizzle. I think that you’ve actually been upset by the response you got…. Which is silly. Point and laugh because nothing anyone says on the internet has any weight ever. I don’t believe for a moment you’re going to care what I have to say but I can hope, I suppose.

Okay, my question of why Robin would come to this school to respond to the ‘Roz’ situation rather than make a statement or hold a press conference or something is now answered. It’s because she’s an idiot. (And not at all because Willis wanted an excuse to get her to the school, of course – what a silly notion!)

I do find myself wondering here – which stance is the fake one? I mean, about half of real-life republican politicians deem to only be pretending to care about “traditional family values” to get/stay elected; perhaps Robin is similarly shilling a line? Perhaps she really *does* accept her sister’s exhibitionistically slutty ways, and is only doing this horrific train wreck of a spin job in order to please her conservative constituents (she hopes). I mean, if she was a *really* hard-core conservative, she would have just disowned her.

Not that that would make her current behavior any less ideologically irritating to Roz, of course.

There’s no way she accept her sister’s slutty ways, she’s making a big show of FORGIVING her sister for having them. She’s just trying to play herself up as a very social conservative, who’s not so far right they’re completely unelectable *cough*Alan Keyes*cough*.

If she wasn’t accepting of her sister’s ways she would just denounce her sister’s actions and distance herself. Even a *moderate* politician could do that and remain very, very electable, so long as they don’t go nuts with the denouncing.

Okay, so maybe the only fear Roz has is in how much her sister will humiliate her this time. Ah, well. I enjoyed my unlikely theory while I could.

Meanwhile, I’m a bit weirded out by how much Leslie resembles a glowing Fisher Price figurine right now. I’m also a bit puzzled about her reaction to Robin’s exploitation of something so unrelated to the material. Stay professional, Beany baby!

I live in Kansas, and our governor is trying to get a federal grant to start up a state marriage program to try and get unwed parents to tie the knot. They’re calling it an effort to reduce child poverty, yet this same summer they tried to shut down our social services office to save state money.